The “Internet of things” (IoT) is a concept, an increasingly growing topic of conversation, with a major potential to impact how we work and live.

“Everything is connected around us. This revolution has already started and it will be bigger than previous technology revolutions, including the mobile smartphone revolution. Internet of Things, as many call it today, will fundamentally affect all of us.“

— Ari Jaaksi – Mozilla Senior Vice President, Connected Devices

In December of last year, Mozilla decided to shift focus to Connected Devices and these days Mozilla officially confirmed that the arrival of Firefox 2.6 in May will mark the last release of Firefox OS supported on smartphones. Meanwhile, Boot to Gecko, which was what Firefox OS was rebranded from, continues to live on as an open source operating system.

It’s time for new challenges!

Mozilla will concentrate at the beginning, on four Internet of Things projects. These projects have a clear focus on user rights and privacy.

A personal user agent that is under the full control of the user. Basically, it helps you interact with your connected devices and may automate certain tasks for you.

“Project Link aims to be your own, personal user agent for the smart home, creating a web of things that is completely yours. Instead of entrusting your data to a third party, your Link agent understands your preferences for how you want to interact with the world of devices in your home, and can even automate your connected world for you. All of this still done conveniently and securely, but completely under your control.”

“SensorWeb wants to advance Mozilla’s mission to promote the open web when it evolves to the physical world. It aims to find the easiest path from sensors to open data so contributors can collaboratively use sensors to get great detail of understanding their living environment.”

“Project Smart Home offers a middle ground between “in a box” solutions like Apple Homekit and DIY solutions like Raspberry Pi. Combining modular, affordable hardware with easy-to-use rules, Smart Home empowers people to solve unique everyday problems in new and creative ways.”

Mozilla wants to create an open voice interface that developers, device makers and end users can utilize.

“Vaani aims to bring a voice to the Internet of Things (IoT) using open, Mozilla-backed technologies. We believe a voice interface is the most natural way to interact with connected devices, but currently, there are no open solutions available at scale. With Vaani, we plan to offer an “IoT enabler package” to developers, device makers, and end users who want to add a voice interface to their devices in a flexible and customizable way, while avoiding the need to “lock-in” with one of the major commercial players.”

Tabara de Testare is a community group for QA that organizes weekly meetings to share knowledge in quality field. Tabara de testare Iasi is the local team from Iasi City which invited Mozilla RO team to hold an event during a weekend to have a workshop about Firefox OS automation Testing.

Making a good and reliable mobile web app it’s important, and making sure your app works as expected every time is crucial. Marionette is a tool designed to test any Gecko enabled app but especially FirefoxOS. (Note: The concepts behind the session are common to all automated testing on the internet, but we will use Firefox OS in this session for simplicity and to focus on the concepts).

During this session, the participants were introduced in the principles of automation testing and they learned how to write automated tests for a web app. Ioana Chiorean broke the ice with a talk about Mozilla RO and then session continued with a small description about the tools and how they work, thanks Bebe for that :).

The attendants installed a simple test environment on their PC (downloaded Firefox OS for desktop and they installed Python 2.7 ). There is no extra hardware required (eg Firefox OS phone) but for advanced level or quick-learning attendees with a Firefox OS phone the tasks can also be run on a phone.

After that, each participant or, in groups, started to work on their own scripts to test different kinds of apps, from the simple ones to the more sophisticated ones. At the end, the participants did a show-and-tell session of their script.

More info can be found here, it contains all the info needed for starting to write tests. Enjoy!

Thanks to all for inviting me there and for such a great techy weekend we spent together. Can’t wait for the next one

Recently I started to learn JAVA. I have to admit that OOP is not actually my “thing” … but I found an entertaining introductory tutorial on Object-Oriented Programming. “A java tutorial that shows you why Coding Java (or any other object-oriented programming) is just like writing a trashy Western novel.” I definitely recommend this tutorial , I think is (one of) the best

Jos Claerbout is the author and his paper is called Don’t fear the OOP. He uses a trashy western novel as his focus to describe OOP. Each idea is presented in “pretty” colors. If in green, the idea is discussed in terms any literate human could understand. If in yellow, it is a bit more programmatical but still not full fledged “programming talk”. And, if in red, it is all about the code. I can’t say I have ever read a paper that used these styles of teaching but it works. It has been a great reference to put me over that edge so I can get beyond the rut I’ve been stuck in.

WordCamp Transylvania is the only local conference which focuses exclusively on exchange of knowledge and experience from the romanian developers and users of WordPress, between 1st – 2nd June 2013.

Talk about WordPress to the WordPress community from Transylvania. Fly you passion for WordPress straight to Transylvania!

People with different background, but with the same interest (WordPress) from the area – and beyond – will take part in the event.

This year’s WordCamp event in Romania will take place in Cluj-Napoca, the unofficial capital of Transylvania and, also the city which hosts – in the same period – the acclaimed eastern film festival – TIFF (Transylvania Film Festival).

Reasons to come to the event:

You will have the opportunity to share your thoughts, ideas or projects related to WordPress in an official WordCamp event

You will enliven the WordPress spirit, by contributing with knowledge for the Romanian WordPress community

In June, Cluj-Napoca opens its gates for Romanian and foreign tourists, hosting a large variety of attractive events, of which – the most important film festival in Romania – Transylvania Film Festival (TIFF). This year, the festival will take place between 31st of May and June 9th.

Some say that this may be the best period to experiment the city’s youthful spirit and to discover its unique charm.

WordCamp Transylvania will take place in the city center, close to the main tourist attractions.

Mozilla is organizing Mozilla Meetup Romania 2013. This meeting will gather Romanian contributors to Mozilla from all over Romania and Republic of Moldova. The schedule will consist of talks, open discussions and social events. Mozilla MeetUp will take place in Cluj Napoca, Romania from April 12th to April 14th, 2013. I will attend and I can’t wait to meet all the contributors and more Mozilla fans

You can find the schedule here. Official MozCamp hashtag: #mozro2013. More info on wiki page.

ClujHub presents an evening of lightning talks and networking on the theme of ‘open’. Join Sourcefabric, Mozilla, OSOM (Open Source Open Mind) and journalist Andrei Aronet to see how open strategies, tactics and tools are revolutionising the web, the media and business. Are you an entrepreneur, coder or journalist open to new ideas? Join us -everyone is welcome to contribute, share ideas and collaborate!

Speakers:

Adam Thomas, Head of Communications as well as Holman Romero, Sourcefabric’s CTO will be flying into present alongside Mihai Balaceanu from the Superdesk team in Cluj.

“Scoala Altfel” (en. Other type of School) is a one week program that all schools from Romania are organizing to offer to the young students alternative to formal learning. Today we were at Liceul Teoretic “Petru Maior” Ocna Mures to talk about Free Software/Open Source. My presentation was about Ubuntu local community, thanks to Alex Cucu we had Ubuntu swag and Ioana Chiorean talked about Webmaker tools and WebApps (Firefox OS ).

I also had a presentation about “Open Source for an Open Education”. There were 36 high-school students and they were very excited to learn about FLOSS. It was a nice experience and we are glad to be able to sustain the local initiative. Hope we’ll be there next year too